Educational Journey of An Entrepreneur event took place on Thursday 2nd of June 2016 at RBS, Gogarburn Conference Centre and attracted around 250 representatives from early stage businesses, support organisations and Universities and Colleges with roughly a third each.
It was organised by Converge Challenge, Scottish Institute for Enterprise (SIE) and Young Enterprise Scotland (YES) in response to a call for step change in enterprise support within tertiary education by the Scottish Government and Scotland Can Do agenda.
The event consisted of a number of keynote speeches and panel debates and was hosted by the BBC Home Affairs Correspondent Mark Easton.
Summary of discussions
Converge Challenge, YES and SIE Learnings and outcomes – Olga Kozlova, Director Converge Challenge
- The Scottish Enterprise Ecosystem is one of the strongest in the UK and Europe with a diversity of provision
- It is critical to retain that diversity of provision but there needs to be easier navigation from a start-up perspective of different initiatives.
- Converge Challenge, SIE and YES pledge to form a structured collaboration to inspire, encourage and support 100% of students in Scotland on their entrepreneurial journey (see Figure 1). The programmes of activities containing joint events, range of case studies and a pool of role models and alumni-mentors will be delivered in the next 12 months and will be monitored by quarterly meetings.
Keynote – Mr John Swinney, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills
- Scotland needs to create and motivate a culture of perpetual innovation across all sectors
- Scotland Can Do created a space where organisations like Converge Challenge, Entrepreneurial Spark and others took initiative to fill gaps and meet needs.
- The government doesn’t want to regulate those areas of help that have sprung up in response to its call for enterprise activities. If the worst thing they do is create a plethora of resources which need to be signposted then lets signpost them.
Panel debate: Olga Kozlova, Fiona Godsman (CEO SIE), Geoff Leask (CEO YES), James McIlroy
- Can Do attitude in students in both FE and HE systems should be built into the curriculum. It can start with as little as a 3 hour workshop. Students need the confidence to take a first step into enterprise
- Different entrepreneurs need different types of support and therefore having a single organisation is not a solution
- There is no one simple answer to streamlining enterprise ecosystem: there needs to be constant dialogue between support organisation and it should be all about benefitting an entrepreneur rather than ownership of projects by various agencies
Entrepreneurial Panel Debate: Tom Walkinshaw (Founder, Alba Orbital Ltd); Christopher Leburn (Managing Director, Chromacity Ltd); Siobhan Mackenzie (Managing Director, Siobhan Mackenzie Ltd); Adam Nichol (Edinburgh College Student); Rebecca Pick (Founder, Pick Protection Ltd)
- All participants have received support from various organisations and received many introductions between those
- Funding is always a challenge, developing confidence is a key first step on any entrepreneurial journey
- More support from school career advisors for the entrepreneurial aspirations of students would be helpful
- There has to be easier navigation from a start-up perspective of different initiatives. This could be achieved by
- joint application forms
- automatic entry to follow-up support for the best performing projects from previous programmes
- joint up approach to offer larger training events on a single subject, reducing the number of compulsory training events to attend
Converge Challenge Ready Steady Pitch Winners:
- 1st place - Anna Renouf - a student from University of Highlands & Islands, she has devised a pioneering new saddle that will offer superior fit and improvements for horse welfare.
- 2nd place - Corien Staels from University of Glasgow who pitched Wheelair - a cooling wheelchair pad to prevent overheating for people with a Spinal Cord injury.
- 3rd place - Susan Mitschke also from University of Glasgow who pitched MindMate, an assistance platform for people with dementia, their caregivers & family members.
The annual Converge Challenge Ready, Steady, Pitch event formed part of the full day “Educational Journey of an Entrepreneur” collaborative event. The Top 30 Converge finalists for 2016 took to the stage to convince the expert judging panel in just 60-seconds that their cutting-edge idea was the best! For the first time there were 3 female winners.
